


Sowing Season

by dreadthenight



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, emotional stress, somewhat happy ending I guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-27
Updated: 2012-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-31 19:30:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreadthenight/pseuds/dreadthenight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the hangar of a SHIELD facility, she stands in wait, Coulson at her right shoulder, as four men fold a flag with practised efficiency, and then one brings it over. And presents it to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sowing Season

**Author's Note:**

> So, yeah. My first ever AO3 fic, wow, this is terrifying. I wrote this drabble for tumblr the other day. Taste my sad!

Clint Barton dies on a Monday.

 

She finds out that night, but the problem is, she’s assigned to Russia and he’s in New York and it’s all a mess. Coulson calls her, tells her, and she feels like she’s asleep. She’s asleep, she’ll wake up next to him, everything will be okay. She laughs at him. She laughs at him when he says, “Barton is gone.”

 

She makes it back to New York, and doesn't laugh.

 

In the hangar of a SHIELD facility, she stands in wait, Coulson at her right shoulder, as four men fold a flag with practised efficiency, and then one brings it over. And presents it to her.

 

When she refuses to accept it, Coulson takes it away, sliding it into his suit jacket. She leaves the hangar without another word, and drinks until it’s daylight again. She wakes up next to their bed- on the floor. For a long moment, she stares at the bed, and she’s not sure if it’s the alcohol that makes her sick, nauseous.

 

She’s not sure if it’s the alcohol or the empty spaces inside her where nothing else will ever fit again. The mottled knot of despair and anger- at him, at herself, at Coulson, at Fury. If they had done their jobs, Clint would be alive. If they’d not signed her to SHIELD, they would’ve spared her the feeling of looking at their empty bed, with its tangled sheets and desolate spaces.

 

_I love your hair long. It’s perfect. Promise you won’t cut it._

 

It’s a Wednesday when she stands in their bathroom with a pair of shears and hacks at her hair, letting it fall around her feet. She leaves it there. Steps over it, runs her fingers through what’s left, and goes back to the floor by their bed. She doesn’t owe him anything. Does she?

 

_Natasha, please. Always promise me you’ll take care of yourself._

 

Friday. She wakes up on the floor of their bedroom. She can’t remember the last time she ate. Her stomach stopped hurting the day before. Or the day before that. They blurred together. Everything became a timeline, made up solely of before and after. Before he died, she laughed and smiled and felt. After he died, she laid on the floor of their room and locked the door.

 

She’s not sure what day it is, only that _it is after_. And she’s staring at their nightstand, and she’s so mad. She’s so angry, she can’t breathe, but there’s a small red box. She sits up- her muscles burn, her stomach aches anew, but she reaches an arm out just enough to grab the thing she’d been too wrecked to even see.

 

She opens it with trembling fingers, and almost drops it. Inside, nestled in padding, is a thin silver band, with a ruby inlay, almost the same red of her hair. She lifts it up to the light from the bedside lamp, and she can see a thin, looping engraving along the inside of it. A date. Their first mission together.

 

She slides it onto her finger carefully, licking at her cracked and ruined lips. She’s not sure what time it is, but it doesn’t matter.

 

Natasha gets up. Gets dressed. Gets a shower. And makes breakfast.

 

Just like Sunday.


End file.
